Uxor and Alison: Noah's Wife in the Flood Plays and Chaucer's Wife of Bath

‘Et dat alapam vita’: A Stage Direction in the Chester 'Noah’s Flood'

“…Meg Twycross derives it from 'folk tradition', but such marital strife is equally common within a very long, bookish tradition of antifeminist satire. 17 If, as is generally assumed, the scene is included as part of the play's comic business, and if Uxor Noe is a 'highly popular exemplar of medieval comic shrewishness', 18 the altercation is a source of popular humour that has increasingly become inappropriate since the later part of the twentieth century. As Lawrence Besserman remarks, the 'rough-housing … fisticuffs' is 'no longer considered a legitimate source of amusement', although it should be noted that, contrary to many readings, the play itself only sanctions a single blow.…”